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Speaker 3: It's actually quite unlike anything we've ever seen before.
Speaker 2: A giant, hairy creature, partape, part Matt in Luckness, a
Speaker 2: twenty four mile long bottomless lake in the Highlands of Scotland.
Speaker 2: If a creature known as the Luckness Monster.
Speaker 1: Monster Talk.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Monster Talk, the science show about monsters. I'm
Speaker 3: Blake Smith and.
Speaker 1: I'm Karen Stolsner.
Speaker 3: I grew up hooked on documentaries As a teen. I
Speaker 3: would plan my evenings around PBS shows, especially on Sunday
Speaker 3: night when they would show the series Nature, which often
Speaker 3: featured repackaged content from the BBC. Sometimes I would even
Speaker 3: stay up late and be tired on Monday mornings at
Speaker 3: school because I'd been binging documentaries past a sensible bed time.
Speaker 3: One time this actually paid off pretty well when I
Speaker 3: had stayed up quite late and ended up falling asleep
Speaker 3: in Biology, which was an early part of my school day.
Speaker 3: I woke up with the teacher calling me out for sleeping.
Speaker 3: Mister Smith, if you know so much about venus fly
Speaker 3: traps that you think it's okay to sleep through the lesson,
Speaker 3: why don't you tell the class about them?
Speaker 4: Now?
Speaker 3: Normally this is where a student should be apologizing for
Speaker 3: sleeping in class. Snap to attention and begin to take
Speaker 3: hyper attentive notes for a bit until the fierce eye
Speaker 3: of the teacher passes on to other matters. But guess
Speaker 3: what the previous night's documentary had been about? So I
Speaker 3: stood up and gave a fact filled summary of the
Speaker 3: nature of carnivorous plants. I talked about the triggering mechanism
Speaker 3: for what brings the specialized leaves together when they trap prey.
Speaker 3: I described the digestive process related species and everything I
Speaker 3: could recall about them, which was enough that when I finished,
Speaker 3: my teacher stared at me for a moment before saying,
Speaker 3: maybe the greatest thing a teacher's ever told me, excellent summary.
Speaker 3: You may go back to sleep. We talk about so
Speaker 3: many monsters on this show that are biologically implausible, but
Speaker 3: I also love it when we're able to discuss real
Speaker 3: world animals. That have become monsterized by culture. We can't
Speaker 3: resurrect dinosaurs, but there are very large birds in some
Speaker 3: countries that certainly aimate some of the ecological niches that
Speaker 3: used to be filled by dinosaurs. And yes, current thinking
Speaker 3: is that birds are the descendants of dinosaurs and it
Speaker 3: shouldn't take much convincing for that idea if you come
Speaker 3: face to face with the subject of this week's episode,
Speaker 3: the Castilewary. We're pleased today to talk with Steve Portugal
Speaker 3: about these amazing and often misunderstood creatures.
Speaker 1: More instrutal.
Speaker 4: Say. My name is Steve Portugal. I'm a biologist, zoologist
Speaker 4: academic at rural Holloway University of London and I've had
Speaker 4: a childhood or since childhood obsession with animals, which I've
Speaker 4: been able to turn into a job, which is ace
Speaker 4: and I've been studying birds for about twenty years now
Speaker 4: and my job entails teaching students, doing research and hopefully
Speaker 4: trying to help animals in the wild to cope with
Speaker 4: the crazy amount of environmental change that they're experiencing.
Speaker 1: Fantastic, Yeah, thank you so much for joining us and Steve,
Speaker 1: I came across an article that you had were partly
Speaker 1: written and had been interviewed for in which you were
Speaker 1: called Stuart instead of Steve, which was interesting. But you
Speaker 1: were talking about a creature that has fascinated me for
Speaker 1: a very long time from my home country Australia, and
Speaker 1: we've had lots of queries about this animal over the years,
Speaker 1: and that's the cassowary. And it seems like you're as
Speaker 1: interested in this creature or even more than us. But
Speaker 1: we wanted to bring you on to talk about this
Speaker 1: bird and just how amazing it is, this dinosaur like creature.
Speaker 1: So can we just start with a little bit of
Speaker 1: information about casterwerries and what they look like and how
Speaker 1: big they are, their diet, where you can find them,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing.
Speaker 4: There are certainly special, special birds and they're so unique.
Speaker 4: And when you visit Australia and you visit regions where
Speaker 4: cassowaries are found, you feel the pride from the people
Speaker 4: that live there for these enigmatic creatures that you don't
Speaker 4: really find anywhere else in the world. So castories are
Speaker 4: these group of flightless birds called d ratites, which are
Speaker 4: often referred to as kind of the ancient birds that
Speaker 4: sort of one of the first birds as we know
Speaker 4: it today to kind of emerge, if you like, from
Speaker 4: for many, many years ago, and they are striking for
Speaker 4: their size. Adult castamories can be up to six feet
Speaker 4: tall until they truly look you in the eye when
Speaker 4: you're stood in front of them, and they can weigh
Speaker 4: up to around forty five to fifty kilograms, so they
Speaker 4: are packing quite a punch, and ironically, I guess for
Speaker 4: something that is so large. Most of the time, their
Speaker 4: diet consists of fruit, fruit, and more fruit, and where
Speaker 4: they're found throughout Australia or rather the tropics of Australia
Speaker 4: and Papua New Guinea, they eat around two hundred and
Speaker 4: thirty to two hundred and forty different fruits, different plant species,
Speaker 4: and in these regions they are actually the main seed
Speaker 4: distributes there. So they're basically like pillars of the ecosystem.
Speaker 4: They are distributing all these different species and all these
Speaker 4: seeds around the environment, and they are the primary sort
Speaker 4: of seed distributor. So we look at them and to think, wow,
Speaker 4: aren't they amazing, But they also have this incredibly important
Speaker 4: role in the ecosystem, and without them, you start to
Speaker 4: see real issues with forest biodiversity. And it starts to
Speaker 4: all go a bit wrong. So they're pretty special birds
Speaker 4: for so many reasons.
Speaker 3: Let me reiterate what Karen said earlier about thank you
Speaker 3: for joining us for all our castle queries. These are
Speaker 3: beautiful and colorful birds, but they've got this very strange
Speaker 3: structure on their head. And I've seen it written, but
Speaker 3: I've never heard it spoken. Is it pronounced cask? Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's correct, Okay, I take it. There's some I don't
Speaker 3: say controversy, but some mystery around what exactly its role is.
Speaker 3: And I'm always curious about how people sort of figure
Speaker 3: these things out. You know, are they is it serving
Speaker 3: some you know, survival biological need or is it a
Speaker 3: sexual selection thing? Is it for cooling? Is it for acoustics?
Speaker 3: Do you know what the latest is on what this
Speaker 3: is probably for? And I'm not saying it's a single purpose,
Speaker 3: you know, biology, but obviously evolution multipurposes wherever it can.
Speaker 4: I think controversy, I think it is a fair fair word. Actually,
Speaker 4: I certainly has caused people to disagree quite quite vehemently
Speaker 4: on this. To actually say, one of the ideas is
Speaker 4: that it acted like a sound resonator, so cast worries
Speaker 4: and the males that do this sort of territorial mating call.
Speaker 4: They have this this amazing low low frequency call that
Speaker 4: can travel for miles and it's sort of on a
Speaker 4: level where if you stood near them, you feel it
Speaker 4: in your stomach like you're being a really loud gig
Speaker 4: or a concert by the speaker. You know, it rumbles
Speaker 4: in your tummy. And it was thought that this this
Speaker 4: cask may helped to do that a bit like it's
Speaker 4: thought that it helps sperm whales increase the sort of
Speaker 4: the sound that they create. Perhaps how dinosaurs like the
Speaker 4: duck build dinosaurs parasoral office, et cetera. It's thought they
Speaker 4: used the similar head design to create to create the sound.
Speaker 4: Then it was suggested it stopped them getting smacked in
Speaker 4: the face when they were moving at speed through this
Speaker 4: dense rainforest. But as you've alluded to, the current thinking
Speaker 4: is actually is to do with some elements of thermoregulation.
Speaker 4: It's got this kind of bizarre and fascinating spongy structure
Speaker 4: inside it, and what studies have shown using infrared cameras,
Speaker 4: you know, looking at the heat signal, that different parts
Speaker 4: of the cask can lose more heat at different times,
Speaker 4: So it looks like it might be something to do
Speaker 4: with with heat, but why it's just in them and
Speaker 4: not their relatives like em use they were also getting
Speaker 4: pretty toasty. It's not entirely clear.
Speaker 1: Interesting, yeah, is and it is such a unique element
Speaker 1: of this bird. And we're using all of these terms
Speaker 1: like beautiful and unique and special. But cassowarries have also
Speaker 1: been called dangerous and even called the world's most dangerous bird.
Speaker 1: So is this true? And can you tell us a
Speaker 1: little bit about what makes them so dangerous.
Speaker 4: They've definitely got that reputation, haven't they. The interesting thing is,
Speaker 4: it's obviously not to take anything away from a single instance,
Speaker 4: but there's only one known recorded incident of a person
Speaker 4: being killed by a cassowary in the wild in Australia.
Speaker 4: That was back in nineteen twenty six. I believe that
Speaker 4: it all was sick and it was a thirteen year
Speaker 4: old boy. It was two brothers and we found an
Speaker 4: adult female. I believe it was in their shed. She
Speaker 4: was a drumming doing around doing castaworry things and they
Speaker 4: panicked and they started to hit it with a pipe
Speaker 4: and a stick that they had in the shed. Then
Speaker 4: they ran away, and castawarries have this strange response, like
Speaker 4: quite a lot of animals do, if you start running,
Speaker 4: They're like, okay, we're running, We're gonna with you. Unfortunately,
Speaker 4: the oldest boy tripped and then the castawary basically I believe,
Speaker 4: kicked him from behind when he was faced down on
Speaker 4: the ground, and their claws, which are about five inches long,
Speaker 4: unfortunately happened to go into his jugular.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, oh boy.
Speaker 4: So it's a very sad story, it is. You know,
Speaker 4: they can't take anything away from that. That's a horrible
Speaker 4: thing to happen. The only yeah, exactly, yeah, And the
Speaker 4: only other instances are actually in the US where people
Speaker 4: are legally allowed to just keep them as pets like
Speaker 4: they can with chimps and other things, and like with
Speaker 4: chimps and other things, often goes horribly wrong because it
Speaker 4: turns out these things are not really meant to be pets.
Speaker 4: But it's just the one, one wild example. There have
Speaker 4: been other injuries. But part of the issue at the
Speaker 4: moment is that people, I guess, this is something that's
Speaker 4: persisting in many facets of our life, that you know
Speaker 4: that they they see a castawerry on the beach, and
Speaker 4: rather than give it lots of space, they go up
Speaker 4: to it, get their phones out, try and video it
Speaker 4: close up. And what happens often is the light shines
Speaker 4: off the back of their phone and castaworries, like many birds,
Speaker 4: are just fascinated. They're nosy, so they start to approach
Speaker 4: to investigate. Then the people panic and run, and then
Speaker 4: the situation escalates really really rapidly. So often some of
Speaker 4: these incidences where people have been injured never actually there's
Speaker 4: never an incidence of a severe injury. I hate to say.
Speaker 4: I would say ninety percent of the time. It's people
Speaker 4: not giving them the space and respect that they that
Speaker 4: they need as wild animals. You know, when more people
Speaker 4: die here from donkeys, et cetera than castawarry, so they're
Speaker 4: to be respected, and I believe all wildlife should be respected.
Speaker 4: I hate seeing this instant response to people just to
Speaker 4: touch it and fuss it and get a photo. I'm sorry, kid.
Speaker 4: Actually this is in Australia and in the South they
Speaker 4: try to put their toddler on a wild one bat
Speaker 4: to take a photo. You know, it's terrifying. I mean,
Speaker 4: one back teeth are they are excellent at cutting through
Speaker 4: lots of stuff and digging so they could take your
Speaker 4: finger off. Thankfully, it was one bat just kind of
Speaker 4: rolled its eyes and wandered off.
Speaker 1: But it would be a lot worse.
Speaker 3: Well it's it could have been worse.
Speaker 1: Been a lot worse.
Speaker 4: Been a lot worse. Yeah, a lot worse. So the
Speaker 4: the videos that I've seen of Castawory starting to get
Speaker 4: tense with people. The people are five six foot away,
Speaker 4: and you should never go up and approach to Casseawory
Speaker 4: five six foot away, like you shouldn't with most animals.
Speaker 4: So yeah, their their reputation I think has potentially been exaggerated.
Speaker 4: It sounds quite a cool story, the world's most dangerous bird,
Speaker 4: and yes, it could inflict some amazing damage. Yet somehow,
Speaker 4: actually the instances of death are just just just the one.
Speaker 4: So I imagine other birds in the world probably cause
Speaker 4: more deaths than customaries have.
Speaker 3: Well, you raised that set point about the livestock for example.
Speaker 3: You know, I read recently that the cows kill more
Speaker 3: people than sharks, and I'm like, well, yeah, and that
Speaker 3: makes sense if you think about it, because where would
Speaker 3: a cow run into a shark? But no, seriously, I
Speaker 3: have looked at a lot of statistics, and farm animals
Speaker 3: are far more dangerous than most of the scary animals
Speaker 3: we think of, because you just the circumstances in livestock
Speaker 3: management or keeping enclosed animals, you're you're extraordinarily close to
Speaker 3: creatures that don't really want you there, you know. And
Speaker 3: and some of them are so big that they can
Speaker 3: just accidentally kill you. But Castlewarry is in particular. My
Speaker 3: grandfather had an emu for I don't know, ten or
Speaker 3: twelve years, And so.
Speaker 1: Why did I not know that?
Speaker 3: Well, I may have told you, but it's a strange
Speaker 3: story because basically he found it running loose on his
Speaker 3: farm and when he was he must have been seventy,
Speaker 3: and he and a neighbor wrestled it into the pig
Speaker 3: pin and it guess what, it tore both of them
Speaker 3: up pretty bad with his clause he didn't want to
Speaker 3: be wrestled into a pig pen. But he kept it,
Speaker 3: and he kept it for in more than a decade
Speaker 3: as a pet, you know. So it was it was
Speaker 3: a love. But it was a bit like having a dinosaur.
Speaker 3: I loved going to see it because its feet looked
Speaker 3: like a velociraptor, you know, And I think the castwarry
Speaker 3: has the same sort of huge claws, and I assumed
Speaker 3: that's partly for defense and partly for being able to
Speaker 3: dig around and find stuff. But they are incredibly intimidating
Speaker 3: looking creatures.
Speaker 4: They are, and they have the like like many of
Speaker 4: their close relatives, they have very big eyes and they
Speaker 4: really they focus on you with both eyes at once,
Speaker 4: and you feel like you're sort of staring at something
Speaker 4: that's kind of yeah, I guess maybe sort of sussing
Speaker 4: you out and contemplating options.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I looked at your research body and I
Speaker 3: saw some of that was around stereo vision in different animals.
Speaker 3: Have you looked at that for the Cassewerry No. I,
Speaker 3: Whilst work with many birds, I'm not convinced, Like, I
Speaker 3: don't know what setup would be required to hold a
Speaker 3: castwery still whilst I look in its eyes and I
Speaker 3: need to be like half an inch away.
Speaker 4: So maybe that that's something I would volunteer someone else.
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe Paul Hogan do that thing with the fingers
Speaker 3: and steering and get him hypnotized. There's a reference.
Speaker 4: I mean they can run. I mean they can run
Speaker 4: like thirty miles per hour. I mean they will if
Speaker 4: you're in a dense forest or even on a forest path,
Speaker 4: they will outrun you with ease, and they will out
Speaker 4: maneuver you with ease. You know. They've got this amazing
Speaker 4: thing where they can crouch down so their center of
Speaker 4: mass and it's really low to the ground, so they
Speaker 4: they're really robust. You know, they're much better at that
Speaker 4: than say EMUs and rears and ostriches. You know, they're
Speaker 4: just incredibly maneuverable. Wow, and they don't look I don't
Speaker 4: like to be rude about ostriches and EMUs, but they
Speaker 4: can look a little ungainly sometimes they can look a
Speaker 4: little they could just kind of trip over at any moment,
Speaker 4: and you don't get that from a cast area. They're
Speaker 4: far more in that sense, as you've already mentioned. They
Speaker 4: look far more bipedal dinosaur like, you know, because of
Speaker 4: how fast they can run and how low to the
Speaker 4: ground and they crouch, so they can definitely look intimidating,
Speaker 4: but they're not. They're not out hunting people.
Speaker 1: As they make it sound.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly. And when you go to these places, and
Speaker 4: maybe you've been up to the North Queensland as well, Karen,
Speaker 4: if you're from of Australia. I appreciate Australia as the
Speaker 4: size of Europe, but the people there are not living
Speaker 4: in fear. That's something I noticed immediately. If you say
Speaker 4: to people, oh, I really wouldn't mind seeing a castawery,
Speaker 4: If oh, well I try here, They're not like, oh,
Speaker 4: you're all going to die. It's like I just don't
Speaker 4: walk up to it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe there's some people from overseas just to joke
Speaker 1: about it. But part of the article that I read
Speaker 1: was about your personal quest to encounter a caswerry in
Speaker 1: the wild. So I have relatives in Queensland, but certainly
Speaker 1: not far north Queensland. It's more around the Sunshine Coast area.
Speaker 1: So go up a couple of thousand kilometers north and
Speaker 1: that's where you would have gone. So can you tell
Speaker 1: us a little bit about this expedition and did you
Speaker 1: find one?
Speaker 4: So it had been a childhood sort of I guess passion,
Speaker 4: possibly obsessioned to see wild castlewarries, and I think that
Speaker 4: partly was I wonder if most children go through the
Speaker 4: dinosaur phase, and I certainly did from about the age
Speaker 4: of five nine. It's part of growing up, isn't it.
Speaker 4: And Obviously, as we've discussed, there's not much in a
Speaker 4: live today that looks more like a dinsaur than a castiglory.
Speaker 4: And you know, zoos have their place at times, and
Speaker 4: I've seen casta worries and zoos, but it's not the
Speaker 4: same experience as I guess, like sort of researching them,
Speaker 4: reading up on them and the field craft it takes
Speaker 4: to actually kind of track things down in a way
Speaker 4: that you're not invading in their sort of personal space.
Speaker 4: And so I was in Australia for work and then
Speaker 4: I sort of was able to separately at the end
Speaker 4: go up to Kennes because my work had taken me
Speaker 4: to Melbourne and I had looked fondly at all these
Speaker 4: photos of these castle worries on the beaches at Mission Beach,
Speaker 4: and it's such a unique place. I believe it's the
Speaker 4: only place in the world where tropical rainforest actually meets
Speaker 4: coral reef. You know, there's there's no gap between it.
Speaker 4: And that was also to something that I thought, if
Speaker 4: I have the chance, i'd love to go and experience that,
Speaker 4: and I like, maybe this might be my only chance. Obviously,
Speaker 4: Australia is quite a long way away from from London,
Speaker 4: and so I just took myself up there for four days.
Speaker 4: I didn't have a car or a means to have
Speaker 4: a car, so I had to plan out kind of
Speaker 4: my walking routes well in advance, and I put lots
Speaker 4: of thought into how to find them and where to
Speaker 4: find them, and then I didn't really think beyond that.
Speaker 4: And it wasn't until my mom sort of said, oh, yeah,
Speaker 4: she's pretty chilled. But she was like, oh, do you
Speaker 4: have a mobile phone signal when you're in the forest.
Speaker 4: I was like, no, no, there's no signal.
Speaker 1: Good question.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I started planning to walk in advance. I was like, well,
Speaker 4: not exactly. I know roughly where I'm sarting, you're on
Speaker 4: your rows. Like yeah. She's like, is there venomous snakes?
Speaker 4: Like it has loads of venom snakes And she was like, okay,
Speaker 4: a plan. Yeah. But for some reason, I think maybe
Speaker 4: I was just being quite single, single minded and I
Speaker 4: hadn't actually, and I've done lots of fool work around
Speaker 4: the world. I'm very very fortunate to have done that.
Speaker 4: With work. Part of me is always aware of the
Speaker 4: dangers of certain you know, snakes are certain insects, and
Speaker 4: actually I mean, you've probably experienced us, both coming from
Speaker 4: and living in countries of far more snakes than we have.
Speaker 4: It takes a lot to actually see a snake. I'd
Speaker 4: love to have seen more snakes in my life, and
Speaker 4: I've gone looking for snakes and I never find snakes
Speaker 4: because they don't really like people there are they run away.
Speaker 4: So I didn't. I didn't see any snakes in Australia
Speaker 4: at all. I was quite disappointed. But yeah, so I
Speaker 4: took myself off to Mission Beach, which I've seen always
Speaker 4: wonderful picture postcard like images of it, and it completely
Speaker 4: lives up to it. It really did. There's no filters
Speaker 4: on those photos that people are showing you of this
Speaker 4: amazing place. It honestly felt like paradise. It's a cheesy term,
Speaker 4: but it felt. I just sat there for you, quite
Speaker 4: quite content, and it was beautiful and feeling very fortunate.
Speaker 1: Really, I've seen just a couple of snakes, maybe garden snakes,
Speaker 1: slithering in front of me going on a hike once
Speaker 1: are I encountered a brown snake, but it was a
Speaker 1: couple of feet away that was coiled up, just sleeping
Speaker 1: in the sun, and I just kept my distance so yeah,
Speaker 1: it's absolutely true. I think people have the idea of
Speaker 1: Australia just being spiders and snakes everywhere. Everything's going to
Speaker 1: kill you, and it's it's not true.
Speaker 4: I think when I was younger, I mean a lot younger.
Speaker 4: You know, this is the seventies and long before the
Speaker 4: internet whatever, I think I had the same image of
Speaker 4: like certain sort of capital cities and African countries had
Speaker 4: images of the pride of lions, like you know, walking
Speaker 4: down what would be the equivalent of oar Oxford Street
Speaker 4: by the houses of Parliament or something, and of course
Speaker 4: you know, yeah, and you go to these places and
Speaker 4: people like, no, you have to like drive for hours
Speaker 4: and then you have to like be super quiet and
Speaker 4: you have to do you know, they're not just hang
Speaker 4: every rafter and every tree. And I'm still amaze actually
Speaker 4: how people have that image of Australia. They kind of oh, no,
Speaker 4: you know, you're not scared every time you like, you know,
Speaker 4: get up in the morning, Like, no, I'm in a
Speaker 4: house in a major city and I love to see
Speaker 4: some wildlife other than the invasive introduced minor birds.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's just what you know, and if you
Speaker 1: haven't experienced it, then all the stereotypes that are out.
Speaker 4: There, absolutely and again, though often a lot of it
Speaker 4: is fueled now by social media. I keep seeing these
Speaker 4: clips of visitors to Australia on the beach, having looking
Speaker 4: rock pools and coming back with one of the blue
Speaker 4: ring octopus in the hands.
Speaker 3: Oh my god. No, just a quick answert here, because
Speaker 3: we didn't explain it. A blue ring octopus is an
Speaker 3: incredibly venomous octopus. They're very small and pretty, but they
Speaker 3: carry enough toxin inside them to kill more than twenty people. Now,
Speaker 3: not a lot of people have died from handling them,
Speaker 3: but it's extraordinarily dangerous toksin. It's the same toxin that's
Speaker 3: and puffer fish, which I think we discussed in our
Speaker 3: coverage of zombies. But that's another story.
Speaker 1: Oh I'm terrified of them, and yeah I never step done,
Speaker 1: unfortunately on the beach, but you see bits and pieces
Speaker 1: of them strewn around. Yeah, you're very dangerous.
Speaker 4: You don't want to. Yeah, it's this weird thing where
Speaker 4: people feel like they have the right to just you know,
Speaker 4: I mean, imagine if people did that to other people.
Speaker 4: I mattere if I just went to the beach and
Speaker 4: went along and like started like fussing someone and picking
Speaker 4: them up. I mean they'd be like, what the hell
Speaker 4: are you doing?
Speaker 1: Like absolutely, yes, how.
Speaker 4: People do that, don't they? There's just this obsession with touching.
Speaker 1: It and like, yes, I guess I instinct to do it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But there's just the reason I love
Speaker 4: living in the UK is now animal here. Technically that
Speaker 4: can kill me unless I really commit to it and
Speaker 4: do something stupid like fall off the cliff or something.
Speaker 4: But you know, when I go abroad, you know, I'm
Speaker 4: not sticking my hands in leaf litter. I'm not putting
Speaker 4: my hand down tree cavities. You just have to be
Speaker 4: a bit sensible about it.
Speaker 1: I guess absolutely.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Reiterate with Karen. So We've lived in this house for
Speaker 3: twenty four years and I've seen three snakes. So they're
Speaker 3: all very tiny, Like I don't the American species, you know,
Speaker 3: we have like pine snakes, which are you know, four
Speaker 3: or five inches long, and the ring tailed or ring
Speaker 3: necked black snakes they're little tiny things. We have garter snakes.
Speaker 3: We have lots of snakes. There's lots of snakes, but
Speaker 3: to see them as unusual, I found the skin of
Speaker 3: a six foot skin, which doesn't mean it was a
Speaker 3: six foot snake, but it was probably, you know, at
Speaker 3: least five feet and I put it on the back
Speaker 3: of my truck and my wife came home and just
Speaker 3: started screaming. I was like, it's just the skin. She's like, no, no,
Speaker 3: we got to move. And I'm like, but you.
Speaker 1: Used to have a snake handling church down the street.
Speaker 3: We did when I was in my hometown. We had
Speaker 3: a snake handling church and that was absolutely full ToxS
Speaker 3: and snakes.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I hope they milk them first. I'm not aware of
Speaker 3: any deaths there, but we actually had two within twenty
Speaker 3: miles of my home. Yeah, that was strange, different story.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Castwerries they're important to the ecology. Are they thriving?
Speaker 3: Are the endangered? How are they doing?
Speaker 4: I mean they're having a terrible time. They are the
Speaker 4: So there's three species of castawarry. You've got the dwarf castawary,
Speaker 4: which is utterly adorable, and the northern castawary, and those
Speaker 4: two are found in New Guinea, and then the southern castavary,
Speaker 4: which is found in tropical Australia. And they think the
Speaker 4: numbers an how are as low as five thousand for
Speaker 4: the southern castle worries just been left in total in
Speaker 4: the whole of Australia. And the two or three major
Speaker 4: problems for them are roads and the encroachment of road,
Speaker 4: direct destruction of the forest, and invasive species like dogs
Speaker 4: and wild and wild pigs. And the pigs are competitors,
Speaker 4: they're eating the same food, but also they eat the eggs.
Speaker 4: If they find tinamus, sorry, if they find castawery eggs,
Speaker 4: they will eat them. And the dogs are actually directly
Speaker 4: they will hunt the castle worries in a pack. And
Speaker 4: there's not really in their evolutionary history casawarries that would
Speaker 4: have been hunting them in packs. Even dingoes a relatively
Speaker 4: recent in the big scheme of things. If you're a
Speaker 4: castawarria species that's been around for you know, thirty million
Speaker 4: years whatever, and so they're not equipped to deal with
Speaker 4: a pack of dogs hunting them for hours and just
Speaker 4: you know, constantly harassing them. And part of the huge
Speaker 4: problem in particularly the Mission Beach area and around there
Speaker 4: are these the farmers have have packs of dogs to
Speaker 4: keep out the pigs, ironically because the pigs eat the crops,
Speaker 4: but these dogs. They don't have to be leashed and
Speaker 4: they don't have to be kept within a fenced area.
Speaker 3: I was literally just talking to my kids about this,
Speaker 3: the dangers of packs of dogs yesterday.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like my son about it. Yeah.
Speaker 3: They can bring down I mean, it's a big problem
Speaker 3: for farmers. They can bring down cows. I mean they
Speaker 3: can bring down and they do overkill sometimes where they
Speaker 3: just kill everything.
Speaker 4: You know, they kind of get that that kind of
Speaker 4: urge I don't know what, you know, that's sort of
Speaker 4: they get. They get excited by what's going on and
Speaker 4: that they have had instances. And this is why it's
Speaker 4: so puzzling because Australia, as you probably know, and actually
Speaker 4: has quite strict dog laws. You know, you're not allowed
Speaker 4: to own more. You know, it's actually good. Wish we
Speaker 4: had it in the UK. If you have dogs, you
Speaker 4: need to have a fenced garden. There's always strict laws,
Speaker 4: but there's nothing. They're only applying to urban areas and
Speaker 4: sort of private owners and somehow farmers don't count as
Speaker 4: private owners. It's essential for their work or something. But
Speaker 4: they've had they've had people attacked, they've had kids bit
Speaker 4: and you know, it's a real problem. But when I
Speaker 4: was there, I tried to sort of to chat with
Speaker 4: the locals and they were all there were such a
Speaker 4: lovely group of people, and people didn't really want to
Speaker 4: talk about it. It was interesting. I don't know if
Speaker 4: there was an an undertone of I don't know, people
Speaker 4: did not want to discuss the dog issue or the
Speaker 4: fact there had been attacks on people. They didn't feel
Speaker 4: comfortable talking about it, whereas they were very happy talking
Speaker 4: about the other issues of people speeding and hitting castle
Speaker 4: worries and the feral pigs and stuff. So it's a
Speaker 4: really a complex thing, you know, it's not one simple.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know what was going on there. I
Speaker 1: just maybe a lot of dog owners and they're protective
Speaker 1: about that.
Speaker 4: I wonder if that was the case. Yeah, because like
Speaker 4: like all of Australia, there is still a First Nations
Speaker 4: tribe who are responsible for that area and they still
Speaker 4: live live in it. And you know, they're saying that
Speaker 4: the dogs are a huge problem. You know that they're
Speaker 4: they're being very vocal about it, these dogs, and they
Speaker 4: actually the farmers for for for fun, they also take
Speaker 4: their dogs out to hunt the pigs. So so no
Speaker 4: one's No one's intentionally hunting cassewary as far as I'm aware. Now,
Speaker 4: it's all I guess, yeah by catch if you like,
Speaker 4: you know, it's it's it's it's that makes it so complicated.
Speaker 4: And one thing was interesting was actually I was chatting
Speaker 4: to people in a pub there and they were saying,
Speaker 4: you know, most of them were saying, how happy they are.
Speaker 4: You know, look where we live. We live somewhere with
Speaker 4: these amazing animals that people from all the world come
Speaker 4: and see, and I live here, how like I you know,
Speaker 4: they have a really wonderful, positive attitude. And then there
Speaker 4: was this small subset who were like, I hate the
Speaker 4: cast of Worries purely because of the speed restrictions on
Speaker 4: the roads around here. So they really, yeah, wow, it's insane,
Speaker 4: isn't it so? But then they all go not that
Speaker 4: I stick to them anyway. I just drive how fast
Speaker 4: I want to drive. So it was quite a fascinating
Speaker 4: sort of human study as well, chatting to people and
Speaker 4: they very rapidly because I was doing this all by foot,
Speaker 4: they were a bit like are you okay. It's like yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: They'd see me kind of in these random spots and
Speaker 4: in their drive past of like do you want to
Speaker 4: lift to towns? Like no, no, I'm I'm intentionally out walking,
Speaker 4: you know, and they were just like okay. And then
Speaker 4: by the second night, I was just like the weird
Speaker 4: English white dude and people, it's amazing. I guess it's
Speaker 4: not a massive community. So it spread. They were like,
Speaker 4: oh as soon as I went to like the bar,
Speaker 4: I said, oh, hello, could I have a pint of beer?
Speaker 4: Because you sound so British when you're outside of Britain,
Speaker 4: you sound you know, you go to America, it sounds
Speaker 4: so ridiculously British and posh. So everyone in the popular oh,
Speaker 4: you're you're the guy that's here to see a castwary
Speaker 4: in question, bizarre.
Speaker 1: That's indeed the place to go to the local pub.
Speaker 1: You'll find out everything, You'll meet everyone, everyone will know
Speaker 1: about you within a couple of hours.
Speaker 3: Appropriate folks. The pub's not just for role playing games.
Speaker 3: It's real life.
Speaker 4: That's not you can do. Yeah. And then the second day, actually,
Speaker 4: when I hadn't seen them, like these three separate random people,
Speaker 4: I was eating my dinner just brought me a beer
Speaker 4: like out of like, oh, bless you. Sorry, you haven't
Speaker 4: seen one.
Speaker 1: Oh that's nice.
Speaker 4: Nice. Yeah. And then on the Sunday, I forgot about
Speaker 4: Sunday trading hours, you know, or rather things might shut early,
Speaker 4: and didn't get out to the pub until about half eight,
Speaker 4: and they said, oh sorry, we stopped serving food at eight,
Speaker 4: and I didn't have any food back where I was staying.
Speaker 4: I think I'd done like thirty seven thousand steps that
Speaker 4: day or something, and my face must have just looked
Speaker 4: like I was about to cry something because I don't worry.
Speaker 4: I've got a frozen pizza. I just go and stick
Speaker 4: it in the oven. And she just gave me this
Speaker 4: frozen pizza from her freezer. Wow, that's so cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: You look at a lot of great communities just in
Speaker 1: remote parts of Australia, where they really being together and
Speaker 1: sometimes can really reject people from somewhere else and at
Speaker 1: other times embrace them. And I think because you were
Speaker 1: there to see a Catterwerry, you were interested in their
Speaker 1: community and the ecosystem there, I think that they welcomed
Speaker 1: you with open arms.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I think I also, by like I say, by
Speaker 4: day two, I looked so pathetic. So I think that
Speaker 4: I think they despite all of the bugs. For I
Speaker 4: was covered in like mosquito by it's my feet. Great,
Speaker 4: it was just I think they were just like, oh
Speaker 4: bless this strange little man from England. And then but yeah,
Speaker 4: and then on the last morning they actually was there
Speaker 4: was a lady there, she's a castawary expert, and they
Speaker 4: actually rung around and some of the people like extended
Speaker 4: their morning driving commute and taking the kids to school
Speaker 4: and stuff just to see if they could find one
Speaker 4: on the road. And then they were going to ring
Speaker 4: Ingrid who's the casterawary lady there to then take me
Speaker 4: to see it, which is to sound believably kind. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: it was. It was quite I took a lot away
Speaker 4: from it, beyond just the nature.
Speaker 1: A real adventure for you.
Speaker 4: Absolutely did you.
Speaker 3: Hear any local castowary stories while you were there that
Speaker 3: were interesting?
Speaker 4: Or I did, and some some good, some bad, I guess.
Speaker 4: So they feeding castawarries as illegal now because so there
Speaker 4: was a big cyclone in two thousand and six, cyclone Larry,
Speaker 4: and it took out a considerable amount of the rainforest.
Speaker 4: I mean it was awful. I mean, thankfully no one died,
Speaker 4: but it flattened it basically major chunks of it, and
Speaker 4: the castawarries were starving to death. They really were. They
Speaker 4: were all going to die. So started feeding them and
Speaker 4: they were feeding them chopped fruits in their garden. And
Speaker 4: there's no doubt that that feeding period got them through
Speaker 4: until some of the city generated. But the problem was
Speaker 4: what they found was if someone had fed castabarries and
Speaker 4: they say they'd lived there for a decade and they
Speaker 4: moved house, and then the new person came in didn't
Speaker 4: feed castle worries, the castleries were coming into that person's
Speaker 4: garden and getting aggressive because they're like, where's my breakfast?
Speaker 4: You fed me for ten years? Like what's going on?
Speaker 4: And also that the people were giving them non native fruits,
Speaker 4: which isn't good for their health. And also it was
Speaker 4: meaning that they were introducing exotic invasives into the forest
Speaker 4: because of course they would go and go to the
Speaker 4: toilet everywhere and suddenly would have passion through growing whatever.
Speaker 4: For me. Yeah, they're beautiful and smell good too. Yeah,
Speaker 4: they made it illegal, but a lot of people still
Speaker 4: do it. So I saw some gardens that were clearly
Speaker 4: you know, like basically like a giant fruit salad out
Speaker 4: just for the castle Aries.
Speaker 1: Wow, I got to get up there and see it
Speaker 1: for myself someday. It is as I said, it's quite
Speaker 1: some trick from the places I go to when I
Speaker 1: when I go back home. But yeah, you're painting a
Speaker 1: very interesting picture.
Speaker 4: It's so worth it. There's this I guess it's like
Speaker 4: a little sub village called Carmu and it's where I
Speaker 4: guess trying to be polite as well. I guess if
Speaker 4: you're quite wealthy, that's where you would live in that area.
Speaker 4: It's sort of the big houses, you know, with the
Speaker 4: big gardens, and they are mainly the ones that are
Speaker 4: still feeding the castle aries, and that's where people go
Speaker 4: for a walk around this estate because that tends to
Speaker 4: be where your chances of seeing them are quite high.
Speaker 4: By it's causing problems because now you know, they go
Speaker 4: on to the beach and there's people just sat there
Speaker 4: watching the world go by, and the cast worries approach
Speaker 4: them expecting food. So it's creating real issue. And again
Speaker 4: this is not unique to casta worries. This is something
Speaker 4: that's happening with other animals around the world, and it's
Speaker 4: just bringing them into contact with people in a non
Speaker 4: positive way, and yeah, it's it's again it's a tricky
Speaker 4: one to solve because people go, no, I don't feed
Speaker 4: the castle worries. Yet when they have castabarries that have
Speaker 4: been hit by cars and it's a horrible number a
Speaker 4: year that are hit by cars, they always do an
Speaker 4: autopsy and their stomachs are just full of exotic fruits
Speaker 4: which they are not found in.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 4: So they are clearly still a giveaway.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4: Yeah. There was a guest house which on the quiet
Speaker 4: was offering for a fee photo opportunities in their garden
Speaker 4: because they were accidentally leaving fruit out, and the casta
Speaker 4: Worries were regular visitors. So there was I won't name
Speaker 4: the guest house, but they were flaunting the law like
Speaker 4: not tomorrow with that and making money from it. Yeah,
Speaker 4: so it was It's a really really tricky scenario. It's
Speaker 4: not very often you have something of that size of
Speaker 4: the cast war that is literally wandering around people's gardens
Speaker 4: and joining you on the beach. You know, it's usual.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's not from the etymology, but it really
Speaker 3: does have the word weary right there in the name.
Speaker 3: Be weary of them, I mean, enjoy them from a distance,
Speaker 3: but there's no reason to be engaging with them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, exactly, And that that's the government slogan is
Speaker 4: be cass wary.
Speaker 1: It really good and you know that actually sounds familiar
Speaker 1: now that you say that.
Speaker 4: Signs and and and they really you know, there's so
Speaker 4: many of the locals as a whole Facebook group, which
Speaker 4: is like if they see an animal and individual being
Speaker 4: sighted regularly at one spot, it gets reported and the
Speaker 4: sign gets put there like a you know, like a
Speaker 4: slow down. This is a frequent use. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: So that there's a huge like impetus by many there
Speaker 4: to save what they see is like their culture in
Speaker 4: particularly like I say, the First Nations, they're like, you know,
Speaker 4: we've lived alongside casseries for you know, millennia, and there's
Speaker 4: a huge body of people there. But it's being undone
Speaker 4: at times by by these dogs, by other decisions by
Speaker 4: you know, I can't remember the exact phrase, but I
Speaker 4: know there's there's disagreements between the state government and then
Speaker 4: the local government and the council.
Speaker 1: And gets complicated exactly.
Speaker 4: Yeah. And it means that sometimes the non ideal decision
Speaker 4: is reached rather than what the local people would want
Speaker 4: to happen kind of thing. So, but there's so many
Speaker 4: people are trying so hard to to help them. You know,
Speaker 4: it's not a case that people don't care. They do.
Speaker 4: It's just a small minority. Like many things.
Speaker 3: I think about Jurassic Park, and you know, it's always
Speaker 3: the giant dinosaur running around and causing havoc. But the
Speaker 3: reality it would be more like this. I think, you know,
Speaker 3: people trying to keep them as pets, people being complaining
Speaker 3: because they're having to change their behavior. Yeah, yeah, we
Speaker 3: had to suck. But are they Are there any casselory
Speaker 3: myths that you would like to see debunked.
Speaker 4: Ah, that's a good question. Well, I guess the idea
Speaker 4: that they are. They are dangerous in the same way
Speaker 4: that here we have red deer, for example, with large
Speaker 4: deer species and the males have impressive antlers. And I
Speaker 4: walked up to a wild red deer and struck my
Speaker 4: face in its face, it would not be thrilled. It
Speaker 4: would respond by swishing a space at me and wanting
Speaker 4: me to go away. So I think that what I
Speaker 4: debunk about the castawary is that they are aggressive, stalking
Speaker 4: humans and running riot through the streets of North Australia,
Speaker 4: and just to make people realize that they actually they
Speaker 4: are solitary. They are timid. They largely do their best
Speaker 4: to avoid people. And if there are these interactions you
Speaker 4: see on social media, it's normally because people have either
Speaker 4: fed them or they are approaching them and scaring them
Speaker 4: or affronting them. And that's I think what I want
Speaker 4: to debunk. They are not evil sort of nasty ninjabirds
Speaker 4: which are attacking people. They are just trying to live
Speaker 4: their life in an area where they've they've been present
Speaker 4: for millions of years and now suddenly it's chopped up
Speaker 4: with roads, as these giant animals and pats trying to
Speaker 4: kill them, and these strange things on beaches offering them crisps,
Speaker 4: and think of what they're actually trying to deal with.
Speaker 4: And I think that would be what I want to debunk.
Speaker 3: You say they're not ninjas, they do sound like fruit ninjas.
Speaker 4: They just I mean, the irony, isn't it. They've got
Speaker 4: this like five inch claw which goodness me could literally
Speaker 4: go right through almost yet they're fruit eaters.
Speaker 1: So it's just like ye gorillas.
Speaker 3: And my memory testing my memories is the paku the
Speaker 3: relative of the product that has the human like teeth,
Speaker 3: but they only eat plants. I think that's rights.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's so many bizarre incidences like that, isn't there?
Speaker 4: And I mean that the historically, I think that claw
Speaker 4: would have probably been for a defensive element, and that's
Speaker 4: largely to defend the young, because of course, you know,
Speaker 4: the young are incredibly vulnerable when they first hatch, they're
Speaker 4: really small, and it's dad that does all the parental care.
Speaker 4: The female just lays the eggs and disappears.
Speaker 1: And that aggressive.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean she actually a recent study showed that
Speaker 4: a female has a much larger territory than the males,
Speaker 4: and in her big territory there would be five male territories,
Speaker 4: if you like, and she will just spend the year
Speaker 4: wandering around. She'll spend a bit of time in territory
Speaker 4: one with you know, Bob, the castawary, and she'll lay
Speaker 4: some eggs with Bob, and then she'll move on and
Speaker 4: then she'll go into number two with Tear. She'll have
Speaker 4: about a month with head and you know, so it's
Speaker 4: really fascinated. Actually, the difference is quite role reversal compared
Speaker 4: to most species. She just lays the eggs and then
Speaker 4: she's off.
Speaker 1: So fascinating. Steve, thank you so much for giving us
Speaker 1: a different perspective from what you'll find on YouTube and
Speaker 1: just social media online in general. And I've just got
Speaker 1: a couple of questions to tie things up with you.
Speaker 1: But now that you've had this adventure and you've encountered
Speaker 1: a cassowary in the wild, what's next for you? What
Speaker 1: are you working on now?
Speaker 4: That's a great question. So at the moment, actually, a
Speaker 4: lot of my research my work based stuff. As Blake mentioned,
Speaker 4: I study the eyes of birds and I try to
Speaker 4: understand how they see the world. And the reason we're
Speaker 4: doing that is to try and understand why certain species
Speaker 4: keep flying into human made structures like wind turbines and
Speaker 4: power lines. And my current work is trying to work
Speaker 4: with energy companies to negate that to try and solve
Speaker 4: the problem of the one hundreds of thousands of birds
Speaker 4: which die through collisions a year worldwide. So that's what
Speaker 4: I've been up to, and that's involved a bit of
Speaker 4: travel to study birds that you don't typically find in zoos,
Speaker 4: So seabirds for example, in the Say show was our
Speaker 4: last trip, and that that's the current research focus for me.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's so important.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, well, Steve, thank you so much for talking
Speaker 3: with us today. We do have our final signature question
Speaker 3: for first time guests, and I think it's time to
Speaker 3: spring it on you. What is your favorite monster?
Speaker 4: And that is a great question too, And I guess
Speaker 4: I'm like, oh, how do you define a monster? I
Speaker 4: think my I guess this isn't very original in a way,
Speaker 4: but there's an Australian one called the bun yip. I
Speaker 4: don't know if you've heard.
Speaker 1: Oh, yes, we've talked about the bun yip.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, and that's my one of my favorites. And it's
Speaker 4: because there's two things I like about it. One is
Speaker 4: this idea that perhaps how the first nations share their
Speaker 4: history is through stories and this has passed on through
Speaker 4: generations and generations. And the idea that perhaps the bunyip
Speaker 4: was actually a real extinct mega marsupial that lived, you know,
Speaker 4: as they did many years ago, but also more recent
Speaker 4: stuff suggests that maybe some of it was casse worries
Speaker 4: they found.
Speaker 1: Written so I didn't know that, wow.
Speaker 4: Written account where they discussed the fact that they found
Speaker 4: some bunyip eggs that were blue and shiny which Castbories
Speaker 4: have one of the shiniest eggs along with Tina moves
Speaker 4: these some crazy crazy eggs, and it made me wonder if,
Speaker 4: perhaps how cool would it be if if actually they
Speaker 4: were also contributing to sort of some interesting legends and
Speaker 4: almost had their own monster equivalent, which I think would
Speaker 4: be pretty cool.
Speaker 1: That is cool. Well, this was such a fun conversation Stevid.
Speaker 1: It was really great to bring you on and just
Speaker 1: pick your brains about this, and we'll have to keep
Speaker 1: in touch and bring you back on to talk about
Speaker 1: your other work at sometimes.
Speaker 4: Sure, it's been really fun to discuss. Customary is always
Speaker 4: happy to check Customary.
Speaker 3: That's excellent, excellent, Thank you again, exactly as Karen said,
Speaker 3: thank you so much.
Speaker 4: Hey.
Speaker 3: Speaking of the Bunyan, we did an episode a while
Speaker 3: back with Paul Michael Donovan from the Federation University of Australia.
Speaker 3: He had done some work on the Indigenous Bunyan stories
Speaker 3: and had made a pretty good case that it was
Speaker 3: actually an indigenous story of an encounter with a seal
Speaker 3: that had come and I'll send you the link to
Speaker 3: that if you want to check it out. It's a
Speaker 3: it's a pretty good story and very it's a very plausible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like the caw version.
Speaker 3: I guess the thing is, it's like you would think
Speaker 3: indigenous people would sort of know that animal. But stories
Speaker 3: can be you know, they change over time, and sometimes
Speaker 3: the repeated story they lose their contact. All kinds of
Speaker 3: things happen. So hard to say, but.
Speaker 4: I think the studies have showed that seals are actually
Speaker 4: they're going sort of further up rivers and they have
Speaker 4: a health before in Australia, So actually they are perhaps
Speaker 4: you know, in the last hundred two hundred years, popping
Speaker 4: up in places they wouldn't have five hundred years ago.
Speaker 4: So maybe at the time it was a bit of
Speaker 4: a mystery and you know, a strange thing with weird
Speaker 4: eyes that makes odd noises. Yeah, you know you can
Speaker 4: see how it would, you know, cause puzzlement if it
Speaker 4: starts something get encountered before.
Speaker 2: Well, on the other you.
Speaker 3: Know, it's it's a mystery creature and they were probably
Speaker 3: quite rare and they were probably wiped out by the
Speaker 3: drop bears, so you know, well there you go.
Speaker 1: We've got it all stown up.
Speaker 3: Anyway, Thank you so much, Thank you, Steve.
Speaker 4: My pleasure. Nice to chat to you both.
Speaker 3: Monster You've been listening to Monster Doc, the science show
Speaker 3: about monsters. I'm Blake Smith and I'm Karen Stoltner. You
Speaker 3: just heard an interview with Steve Portugal about the amazing
Speaker 3: birds the castiwarries. A link to the article about Steve's
Speaker 3: hunt for this bird is in the show notes, along
Speaker 3: with some other links for further reading, including some writing
Speaker 3: by friend of the show darren A. She's all so
Speaker 3: fascinated by these beautiful birds with their fearsome appearance. Check
Speaker 3: out those show notes. We hope you've enjoyed this episode
Speaker 3: of Monster Talk. Each episode we strive to bring you
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Speaker 3: on bringing scientific skepticism into the conversation. If you enjoy
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